Ways of seeing

[imomus]

What would I say to the world if the BBC made me a "television essayist" and gave me a series? I might make a programme called London: a modest proposal, like my Click Opera entry of June 21st, 2005:

"All you'd need to do to make London really quite a wonderful place is route all motorised traffic underground, send the businessmen to Birmingham and Hong Kong, install air conditioning everywhere, rip up the grey fitted carpet and install wood floors, change all the food and chefs, halve the price of everything, scrap fees for Japanese art students, introduce the euro and ban the journalists from writing about class. Oh, and turn all the TV and radio stations over to the insane."

I like to think my television essay would be something like John Berger's brilliant, polemical 1972 television series Ways of Seeing. Here are a few precious clips of it which have recently turned up on YouTube, on the subject of advertising:

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I love the way Berger makes three studies of the dreamworlds created by advertisements, or flicks through the Sunday Times colour supplement and (Victor Burgin-style) calls the juxtaposition of editorial nightmares (images of Bangladeshi refugees) with sensual advertising dreams "mad". Do we have television essayists today condemning our culture as a mad one? I suppose the great Adam Curtis springs to mind.

Berger, of course, is still around. Give him another series, BBC! And in the meantime, someone put the rest of Ways of Seeing up on YouTube!

Comments

[kumakouji.livejournal.com]

"All you'd need to do to make London really quite a wonderful place is route all motorised traffic underground..."
Agreed.

"send the businessmen to Birmingham and Hong Kong"
No, replace them with robots.

"install air conditioning everywhere"
it rarely gets hotter than 24 degrees here. I couldnt give a fuck about anywhere else as long as the tubes are cool.

"rip up the grey fitted carpet and install wood floors"
Or metal, stone or glass floors -- something "open". just none of that grey "hide a multitude of sins" carpet thats everywhere.

change all the food and chefs
Its not the food that bothers me in London, it's the price. You walk into any restaurant and theres no way you're getting lunch for under £10 unless it's an American fast food chain or frozen "pub grub". I'm also sick of seeing immigrants on the streets selling hotdogs for like £3. They can drop their prices or fuck off back to Albania.

halve the price of everything
signed.

"scrap fees for Japanese art students"
What? no. They already get instantly hired just by walking into any Japanese restaurant/shop and applying, not to mention im yet to meet a Japanese student here (and there are lots of them) who hasnt had everything paid for by mummy and daddy. They can afford the fees.

"introduce the euro"
I know you like being cosmopolitan, but the Euro is bad news for Britain. Europe isnt the united states -- we all speak different languages and our economies are different and that could create problems. After joining the euro, Britain might also find that it's unable to combat recession by loosening it's fiscal stance, which is most definitely bad, not to mention one central bank in burssels can't set inflation at the appropriate level for each member state. Theres also the loss of sovereignty and the cost of coverting to the euro.

Say No to the Euro.

and ban the journalists from writing about class
*shrug*

Oh, and turn all the TV and radio stations over to the insane."
I thought that'd already happened what with the increase in absolute GARBAGE on tv lately.

[freesurfboards.livejournal.com]

the videos are intresting - i think that the link he was trying to make between the refugees and the advertisments is a bit weak - the photos of refugees are sensationalized by people who were taught at the same schools as fashion photographers. Because of their otherness the suffering is magnifed, or so I think.

"Between these images the truth is blurred" he says. Perhaps advertisments are the filter we see all images through. "The photos of refugees are fantasy, like the thousands of images I see everyday" might be what I'm thinking.

[niddrie-edge.livejournal.com]

I enjoyed Berger's appearance in the documentary on Sebastião Salgado's Migrations - The Spectre Of Hope.
http://www.frif.com/new2002/spect.html

[(Anonymous)]

Shame the Beeb doesn't make Ways of Seeing available on DVD, the companion book published alongside the programme doesn't quite match up to the television series and some of the essays -though still pertinent- are showing their age.
Pleased you brought the YouTubes to attention.
Thomas S.

Fat Man On A Beach

[jackmottram.livejournal.com]

It's definitely time for more "television essayists" - strange to think that folk like B.S. Johnson (www.bsjohnson.info) used to be given slots on primetime ITV to witter about poetry. (No sign of him on YouTube, sadly.)

Ways of Seeing is available

[(Anonymous)]

For the record, what I believe to be the complete Ways of Seeing series (4 parts?) is available as a torrent on--

http://karagarga.net